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Monday, 12 May 2014

Sunderland 1 - Swansea 3 Stats and Chalkboards

After the drabness of the Southampton game, it was good to see out the season on a high with this game arguably finished after 15 minutes with Swans scoring from their first two shots.

Sunderland might have outshot Swansea 20-8 but the two early goals meant far less of an issue for Swansea to try and force the game.

Monk mentioned that 2-0 was a dangerous score but presumably he hasn't read this by Prozone's Omar Chaudhuri which shows that even when a team goes two up with 75 minutes left, they still win 90% of the time.

It was good to see Jay Fulton get a start, there's definitely a feeling that Monk is planning on being here for the long term and there's a reasonable chance that there will be an even more integration with other areas and not just the first team. It'd be unfair to overly criticise Laudrup's tenure, but if you're only going to be around for a couple of season then areas beyond the fringes of the first team are less likely to be of concern.

Fulton's Pass Map

If rumoured figures are correct then the estimated £200k for Fulton and £175k for Adam King maybe cost less than the wages for David N'Gog who played a total of 42 league minutes for Swansea.

In some respects this is like questioning why you bothered buying home insurance as you're house hasn't burnt down.

With injury problems for Michu, if anything had happened to Bony and Ngog hadn't have been bought, then you'd be left with either Emnes up front (which given his form since rejoining wouldn't have been a disaster) or Vazquez, who despite being hugely disappointing only played a total of 412 minutes in the league, of which only 3 minutes were under Monk and 747 minutes overall which in all competitions relates to just over 8 full matches.

The season may be over but that means a chance to fill the long few weeks before Bony takes the World Cup by storm with some analysis of the season as a whole without the worry that your stats end up out of date after a couple of days.

I'm also going to be talking about the season in general (for all teams not just Swansea) at a 'Football and Data' event in London on May 21st. If you fancy coming along use the code JACK to get a ticket for a fiver.